One idea very important to both Clay and I was that every day we spent with our children mattered. We talked about it often, both the two of us alone and in conversation with our children. After all, the way each moment is lived adds up to the way the day has been lived, and ultimately those days become the story of our lives.
If we fail to number our children’s days—to be serious about how we will shape and influence their hearts and minds for God during our brief window of opportunity—then others will do that for us, with or without our consent. Our children will take from others—whether peers, culture, church, media, teachers, or strangers–the influence and instruction that God designed them to find primarily from us, their parents. Our children’s spirits are hardwired by God to look to us first for the spiritual influence they long for because of God’s image within them. If they don’t get it from us, they’ll seek it elsewhere.
A closer look at Moses’ prayer in Psalm 90 reinforces this idea. It is a prayer to the God who has “been our dwelling place in all gen- erations” (v. 1). In other words, God is and always has been faithful and trustworthy, and we will discover true life only by finding the life He offers in Himself, our ultimate dwelling place. In the first eleven verses of his psalm, Moses meditates on the same transience of life that David confessed. He admits that our lives are like grass that sprouts in the morning and is gone that night, putting it in the familiar context that “a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night” (v. 4).
He first paints the big picture, but then he makes the reality of passing time very personal: “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years . . . for soon [our life] is gone and we fly away” (v. 10). To paraphrase a popular modern proverb, “Life is short; then you fly.” Seventy or eighty years would have been a long, full life when Moses was writing, and yet in rela- tion to eternity it is a “watch in the night.” But even though Moses justifiably laments the brevity of life with these words, don’t miss that he’s also building his case for why we need to take life seriously.
Moses’ meditation on the fleeting nature of life leads naturally, yet perhaps a bit surprisingly, into his life-affirming request of God: “Teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom” (v. 12). Like David, Moses is declaring by way of his prayer the importance of knowing the end from the beginning, of embark- ing on the journey of life with the destination in mind. The Hebrew word for “to number” can also mean “to prepare,” so Moses might also be saying “teach us to prepare our days.” Or, to put the request in plain language, “Show us how to plan our lives so we can please You, Lord.” It’s not just about what to do or be; it’s also about who to become—a wise child of God.
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